A telecommunications network is comprised of a network of telecommunications links and nodes. Examples of telecommunications networks include a computer network, the Internet and the Public Switched Telephone Network. Telecommunications network links, including nodes, may in turn be built out of hierarchical transmission systems which transmit signals from one place to another. These may be communicated as electrical, optical or radio signals.
Telecommunications networks typically comprise core networks and access networks. A core network is the central part of a telecommunications network that provides various services to customers who are connected by the access network. Core networks provide the services of traffic aggregation, user authentication, connection/control switching (routing), billing, service invocation, access to gateways to gain access to other networks, hosting the user/subscriber database and core network operations/maintenance. An example of a core network is the Network Switching Subsystem (NSS) in the Global System for Global communication (GSM) relating to mobile communication, which supports cell phones, PDAs, mobile automotive platforms and the like.
An access network refers to the portion of a communications network which connects users/subscribers to their immediate service provider. The access network may also include feeder plant or distribution network(s), and drop plant or edge network(s). Access networks may be subdivided to include a dedicated access network comprising wires, cables and equipment physically connecting a user to the core network, and a radio access network. A radio access network is generally considered to be part of a mobile telecommunications network. It implements a radio access technology, and it resides between the mobile device(s) and the core network. It is possible for a single mobile device to be simultaneously connected to multiple radio access networks. Devices capable of this are sometimes called dual-mode devices. In this embodiment, the mobile device can support both GSM and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), also known as “3G” or third generation radio access technologies, making it possible to seamlessly transfer between different RANs without the user noticing any disruption in service.
Access networks represent a critical part of telecommunications carrier's network infrastructure. Decisions affecting design, deployment and installation directly dictate operation, upgrade and maintenance costs, and therefore play a key role in a carrier's overall profitability. Since carriers frequently have both dedicated and radio access networks as part of their overall service offerings, it would be desirable to optimize these in a manner that takes advantages of the synergies between them. While emphasis has been directed to optimal access network topology design and ongoing adjustment and tuning to maximize profitability, access networks are typically optimized independently in today's networking environment.
When considering access networks individually, the synergies between the networks may not be a significant consideration, yielding a less than optimal overall deployment of resources, particularly the applicability to use a common network whenever possible. Current methods to optimize access network deployment involve manual analysis in examining and comparing the outputs from various optimization models and they do not holistically consider the problem taking into account any synergies between the dedicated and radio access networks. Business plans are frequently established based on ad-hoc parameters or assumptions, and not applied uniformly in a manner that provides systematic enforcement in consistency among various business programs. It therefore becomes difficult for a carrier to do any extensive “what-if” scenario analysis, thereby resulting in reduced access network savings, sub-optimal resource allocation and profitability.
In view of the above, it would therefore be desirable to develop a methodology and system for enabling integrated access network business planning that takes the output from all optimization models and jointly determines the overall optimal network resource deployment to ensure consistency between networks, minimize resource requirements and achieve maximum profitability for a given set of business planning parameters including, but not limited to, overall capital spending, overall operation resource, throughput limits, planning horizon, etc. It would also be desirable to enable a carrier to examine different scenarios of various access network options to ultimately reduce access costs by jointly optimizing the overall system. To the inventors' knowledge, no such system or method currently exists.